Dr. Mark Sibley-Jones stands next to the Romeo and Juliet statue in the courtyard of the S.C. Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities. / Donna Isbell Walker/Staff

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City People writer

PROFILE

Name: Dr. Mark Sibley-Jones, English instructor at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Education: Bachelor’s degree from Furman University, master’s of divinity from Duke University, PhD from University of South Carolina. Family: Wife, Julia; daughter, Spencer; son, Jack; a third child due in September.

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As a kid, Mark Sibley-Jones wasn’t much of a reader until an English teacher at Hillcrest High School suggested he check out Geoffrey Chaucer’s bawdy “The Miller’s Tale.”

The teacher, Thelma Wright, “tricked me,” Sibley-Jones recalls.

“She said, ‘I know you’re a fine young Christian man, and I don’t want you to read this because it’s all about sex and debauchery.’ And I said, ‘Yes ma’am, I will read it,’ and I went home and read it three times over.”

The Chaucer story got Sibley-Jones hooked on the written word. Nearly four decades later, he is still an avid reader who loves to share his passion with his students at the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities and the University of South Carolina.

Sibley-Jones, who teaches advanced placement language and composition at the Governor’s School and a seminar in British literature at USC, recently was recognized as one of the four best literature professors in the United States by the Princeton Review and RateMyProfessors.com.

The honor is based on the results of surveys by Princeton Review and ratings on RateMyProfessors.com.

Reading, writing and teaching have been intertwined in many ways for Sibley-Jones, who was a United Methodist minister before going into teaching, and whose professorial demeanor is leavened by a sly sense of humor.

The award may be prestigious, but Sibley-Jones describes its impact with a twinkle in his eye.

“It is exciting. I don’t know what exactly to make of it, and the reason for that is, there are so many professors I know that are better at this craft than I am,” Sibley-Jones says, citing Governor’s School colleagues such as George Singleton and Jennifer Thomas.

Overall, though, “It means people will call me up and say, ‘That’s a nice honor, and we saw your picture, and you have a nice smile, and we just think you’re the sweetest thing in the world,’” says Sibley-Jones, sitting in the Governor’s School courtyard on a balmy spring day.

As an educator, Sibley-Jones wants to teach his students to read critically and thoughtfully, and to explore other subjects.

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“The main thing is to get them to understand how vital to our own intellectual and moral well-being reading is, and it’s not just the reading of literature. It’s history, psychology, philosophy.”

Inspiring students is one of the most important tasks of a teacher, he says.

“The best students are self-taught, because they have that drive. And I don’t know enough to give them even one-fiftieth of what they ought to know about books, about literature, about history. But if I can get them excited about their own capacity to learn, I feel like I’ve done most of my job,” he says.

While Sibley-Jones, who’s 54, has been at USC for 15 years, this is his first time teaching high school, and it’s been a learning experience for him as well as his students.

One lesson was that high school students aren’t always as motivated to devour literature as college English majors.

“I didn’t anticipate the remarkable difference between 21- and 22-year-olds, and 17-year-olds. ... Early in the year, I expected too much, and so I had to modify my expectations.”

For example, when assigning a research paper to college students, Sibley-Jones is confident that his students know where to begin. High school juniors haven’t had much, if any, experience in researching, and then weaving together facts and conclusions.

“Ninety-five percent of the students get it, and five percent don’t. And somehow, I’ve got to learn how to offer instruction to that five percent,” he says.

Sibley-Jones’ student Julia Stewart, a junior at the Governor’s School, says she has learned about writing and discovered new writers in his class.

But more important, says Stewart, he is a caring teacher who has been open about his own learning process.

“It’s been a lot of fun because he’ll work with us and do the stuff with us, and not just tell us what to do,” Stewart says. “He cares, and it’s really inspiring.”

Sibley-Jones came to education after two decades as a minister, a job that included its fair share of teaching. And there is some overlap between the two professions.

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Asked what he brings from the ministry into teaching, Sibley-Jones deadpans, “Godlessness,” then explodes in a hearty cackle.

Turning serious, he says, “In both professions you want to learn to be compassionate and understanding, and I think in both professions you learn soon enough that you have a lot more to learn than to teach.”

When he isn’t in the classroom, Sibley-Jones plays golf, “badly,” and still reads voraciously. He’s a huge fan of the colleague/author he teasingly refers to as “a fellow name of George Singleton,” as well as Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner.

Two pieces of literature to which he returns again and again are both by Shakespeare: “Hamlet” and “King Lear.”

He’s fascinated by “King Lear” because “I want to learn as much about Lear as I can so that when I am as old as he is, I will not be nearly as stupid as he is. What is tragic about Lear is the monumental capacity of his stupidity.”

His wife, Julia, helps nurture his literary side even now.

“I married a woman who does not allow cable TV in our home,” he says. “She reads about a hundred books, serious books, a year. She was a philosophy/religion double major in college, and has never given up her desire to learn.”

Sibley-Jones also writes fiction, although he says ruefully, “I’m terrible.... I wrote a 100,000-word novel, and it’s about the worst thing that’s ever been written.”

He’s now working on a historical novel about the Civil War, which he hopes to finish it over the summer. USC Press has first right of refusal on publication, he says.

Sibley-Jones is cautiously hopeful about the novel, but no matter what happens, he has plenty to keep him busy. He and his wife, already parents to a 21-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, are expecting their third child in September.

With characteristic humor, Sibley-Jones says he “won’t have any teeth” by the time this child finishes high school.

The writing is a creative outlet and an exciting activity for Sibley-Jones.

“Writing engages me in a way that no other activity does,” he says. “It’s fun, it’s difficult, and when I finally am able to put together a phrase or a sentence that makes sense, that’s good, I have this marvelous feeling of accomplishment.”